Innovating civic media tools and practices and testing them in communities

Wikinews and Multiperspectival ReportingWikinews is a wiki in which users write news articles collaboratively. The project, established in 2004, is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that also supports Wikipedia. Wikinews has produced over 37,000 articles in 22 languages, with roughly one quarter of those in the English language version of the site. The site foundered early; its output seems to have stabilized to about 4-6 news articles daily, compared to an average of 16 articles each day in 2004. Comparing Wikinews to other “participatory” news sites such as Ohmynews and Indymedia, Axel Bruns contrasted “multiperspectival coverage of the news” with the Wikinews collaborative model.

FCC super Wi-Fi plan: There is no plan.Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images A somewhat confusingly structured Cecilia Kang article (the inverted pyramid is not a great way to explain everything) has got the whole Internet abuzz about an FCC plan to build a national Super Wi-Fi network and the evil telecommunications companies who are trying to kill it. The FCC does have a good idea here and the telecommunications companies are evil, but there is no such plan.Imagination, Computation, and Expression LaboratoryWe're excited to launch the public beta of our interactive narrative game, Mimesis ! In Mimesis , you play as a mimic octopus who has lost her way, and encounters various undersea creatures on her way home. Will the anglerfish help or hinder you? Is the seahorse getting snippy? Use your heart and emotions to guide your conversations with them as you move toward home!

HomeIn our self-governing society Who should we call on to fix broken government? We can blame politicians, the media, or special interests Till we're red or blue in the face But sometimes you just have to turn the mirror around. Want to become more effective as a citizen?Henriette CramerI’m a research scientist at Yahoo! Labs’ Mobile Sensing and User Behavior group in Sunnyvale, California. On a very general level, I’m interested in how people perceive technologies and integrate them into their daily lives. My research revolves around mobile location-based services and people’s perceptions of their surroundings, ‘Research in the Large’: using wide distribution channels and existing services for research purposes, and people’s perceptions of applications and ‘things’ that use data around -or about- them to adapt and personalize themselves.

Forget IQ, Collective Intelligence is the New Measure of Smart (videoWe may focus on the stories of individual genius, but it will be harnessing the intelligence of the collective that enables humanity to solve its future problems. Do you know your IQ, that little number that’s supposed to measure how smart you are? Forget it. Individual intelligence is old news, collective intelligence (CI) is the future. And it’s already here.

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networksThe airwaves that FCC officials want to hand over to the public would be much more powerful than existing WiFi networks that have become common in households. They could penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees. If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas. The new WiFi networks would also have much farther reach, allowing for a driverless car to communicate with another vehicle a mile away or a patient’s heart monitor to connect to a hospital on the other side of town. If approved by the FCC, the free networks would still take several years to set up. And, with no one actively managing them, con­nections could easily become jammed in major cities.

SHASS: Multimedia - Listening RoomClassical World Jazz Faculty Opus “The MIT mission is to serve humanity, and the arts provide a powerful way for our students to grow in knowledge and understanding of the human condition.